Spring has Sprung

The last few days have been more or less spring-like. There was ice on the car windows yesterday morning and yet by 10 it was so warm that I turned off the heat. The crocus and daffs are starting to make brave appearances. The weeds are thriving.

This afternoon The Spouse went to Costco and came home with a weeping flowering cherry tree. It is de rigeur around here that folks plant their ornamental cherries on their parking strips. This does, admittedly, make for some lovely streetscapes. But I'm a selfish wench. I spend most of the day at my desk in the kitchen, with a view to the back garden. Which is a fairly bleak space. The cherry is going to be the start of changing all that.

There is a dream, which may well evolve into a plan, to do something spectacular to our back garden. This would first involve removing our deck, which is a carbuncle, and creating a terrace. I envision French doors instead of sliding glass and wide, sweeping steps to the terrace where people could perch on comfy outdoor pillows when the chairs are all taken. (There are other ideas, for an outdoor kitchen of sorts and a bread oven but I'll settle for the deck being gone).

The deck, besides being ugly, chops up the long, narrow space in a very unwieldy way. To the north is The Child's playhouse (which some year will be converted to a garden shed). To the south is a bit of lawn just the right dimensions for a boules court. Which we play in the summer and which we still want to be able to do. But it would also be nice to get to the north end of the garden without having to go all the way around the deck.

Plantings are relatively uninspired. There is some sort of tree growing at the extreme north end, which no one has been able to identify, but which isn't too tall, maybe 12 feet. At the south end of the deck I've planted a bed of my go-to plant, lavendar. There is a bay laurel in a pot and I try to remember to scatter nicotiana among the lavendar for maximum summer evening fragrance. And that's it.

Last fall I did a very clever thing. I got 3 bits of ducting which I positioned at intervals along the very ugly cyclone fence. I filled them with potting soil and planted 3 honeysuckle vines. They grew, to my surprise, throughout the winter and are already wending themselves through the fence. Every few days I go out and poke new growth through the links so that it will climb and spread all over.

The cherry tree will grow to about 12 feet so we've positioned it at the south end of the garden, in line with the Mystery Tree. It will interfere somewhat with our boules game but I'm sure we'll be able to work around it. More to the point, we'll gain a little more structure, some shade and the beauty of something where once there was nothing. Once the tree is in I'll think about some appropriate shade-lovers to plant around it to help soften up all the edges. I'm finally beginning to see my way to creating an outdoor "room" in back that looks less like a trailer park and more like a garden.